Replica

Gerri smiled ruefully. “Mother drafted me. She has a dinner party to plan and didn’t feel she had time to properly, um, debrief you.”

Nadia closed her eyes and prayed she’d slip back into a deep sleep. She’d dodged the proverbial bullet last night when her mother cut the expected lecture short. She should have known that wasn’t the end of it. And she knew exactly why Esmeralda had chosen Gerri as her weapon. From what Nadia could tell, all mothers learned how to wield guilt like a deadly weapon, and Esmeralda liked to make certain Nadia was always aware of how her actions affected not just herself, but her entire family—including Gerri’s two kids, Rory and Corinne.

Gerri rose to her feet and came to sit on the edge of Nadia’s bed. She wore a ruby red power suit that said she planned to go to work after she was finished “visiting.” With the red suit, alabaster skin, and nearly jet black hair, she looked like an evolved version of Snow White: beautiful and deadly, instead of beautiful and fragile. She was twelve years older than Nadia, so they hadn’t exactly grown up together, but Nadia had always admired her sister’s strength and certainty.

Gerri’s marriage was an arranged one, of course, and her husband was—in Nadia’s opinion—a nasty little toad of a man. But Gerri never complained or seemed unhappy. She did her duty as an heir, as a wife, as a mother, with never the slightest hint that she might want something more. Gerri was the ideal Nadia strove to emulate, but she always seemed to fall a little short.

All of which meant Gerri would have little sympathy for Nadia’s dilemma. Nadia’s duty was clear: protect her family at all costs. If the only way to protect her family was to give in to Mosely’s demands and stab Nate in the back, then so be it. She would just have to figure out how to do it without him ever finding out.

“How are the kids?” Nadia asked her sister. It was a long shot, but maybe if she could get Gerri talking about her kids, she could squirm her way out of the “debrief” Gerri was supposed to give her.

Gerri’s ironically raised eyebrow said she saw right through the ploy. “They’re little demons sent from hell to torment me,” she said with a fond smile. “Corinne has an ear infection, and Rory is in one of those everything- goes-in-the-mouth phases. And if you think you’re going to divert me that easily, I’ll have to ask the doctor to check your meds.”

So much for delaying the inevitable. Nadia stared at the nearly empty IV bag. She had no idea what the doctor had given her. The label had been blacked out, which meant whatever it was had come from the black market. Thanks to import taxes, some medications manufactured by rival states were preposterously expensive and best bought under the table. Illegal, of course, but it was a rare Executive who used no contraband. Nadia wondered if she could pretend the drugs were making her too loopy to handle a serious conversation.

“I’ll give you the rundown of what happened, but please skip the lecture,” Nadia said. “I know I shouldn’t have gone off alone with Nate at the party, but you know how he is. I tried to stand up to him, but he’s a force of nature.”

Gerri gave her a hard look. “You’re going to be his wife. You’d better learn to stand up to him or he’s going to walk all over you for the rest of your life.”

Easy for Gerri to say. She’d inherited their mother’s backbone and their father’s power. She had no trouble issuing orders, and no trouble having those orders obeyed.

“You try standing up to Nate someday,” Nadia grumbled. She wasn’t sure who would win a battle of wills between Nate and Gerri, but if she had to bet, she’d place her money on Nate against just about anyone.

“I don’t have to. You do.”

Nadia flopped over onto her side, facing away from Gerri. “Fine. Tell me how inadequate I am. There’s nothing I’m more anxious to hear right now.”

Gerri sighed. “Don’t be like that. I’m not saying you’re inadequate.” She laid a hand on Nadia’s shoulder and squeezed. “I love you, you know. I’m just trying to help. I know Nathaniel would be a handful for anyone, but I also know that you’re the one who’s going to be stuck with him, and you’re the one who’s going to have to learn to live with him without being miserable.”

Nadia sniffled, though the black-market mystery drug seemed to be knocking out her symptoms with remarkable speed. Illness would not be her cocoon for very long. “Most girls would laugh at the idea that I’m ‘stuck’ with Nate.”

“Most girls don’t have enough of an imagination to see what a pain in the ass he is.”

Nadia turned over to face her sister, surprised by the words. But then, maybe she shouldn’t be. Gerri was the heir to their father’s presidency. Nate was far from the most dutiful heir in the world, but he had no choice but to fulfill some of his obligations, which no doubt meant he and Gerri had attended many a business meeting together. Clearly, Nate hadn’t made the best impression.

“I know you like him, Nadia,” Gerri continued, “but to be perfectly honest with you, I can’t see why. He’s nothing but a spoiled brat with an enormous chip on his shoulder and a deeply rooted conviction that he’s God’s gift not just to women, but to the universe itself.”

Nadia blinked. Gerri was not a kiss-ass, but it wasn’t like her to be so openly critical of someone who outranked her—and who held the future of their entire family in his hands. As long as nothing went wrong in the next two years and Nadia ended up formally engaged to Nate, their father would eventually be promoted and given a seat on Paxco’s board of directors—a seat that Gerri would inherit, when the time came. The power and prestige that came with becoming a board member were considerable, but there was another perk to the position, perhaps the most important perk of all: board members and their immediate families were eligible for periodic backup scans, and if there was a preventable death in the family, there was a high likelihood a Replica would be animated. Gerri had almost lost Corinne to a particularly virulent strain of flu that had swept the continent last year, and she was more aware than most of how fragile a human life could be.

Gerri smiled tightly. “I’m sorry to be speaking ill of your future husband. I just can’t help thinking that if he’d behaved like a responsible adult, you wouldn’t have been dragged into this mess.”

On that, Nadia and Gerri could agree.

“There’s no use wishing Nate didn’t act like Nate,” Nadia said. “I’m not stupid enough to think he’s magically going to change.”

“You’re right, he’s not. Which means you have to.”

Nadia wanted to slap herself. She’d walked right into that one.

“I did what I thought was right at the time. Nate suggested he was going to make some kind of trouble if I didn’t leave the party with him. If I’d known what was going to happen, of course I’d have called his bluff. But I didn’t know. How could I?”

Gerri pursed her lips. “I know hindsight is twenty-twenty. But still, even if Nathaniel behaved like a complete boor, that would have reflected poorly on him, not on you.”

“And if he’d created some kind of international incident, it would have been my fault.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Gerri snapped, her narrowed eyes and the intensity of her disapproval making her resemblance to their mother more obvious. “No one’s going to hold a sixteen-year-old kid responsible for the Chairman Heir’s actions.”

Heat rushed into Nadia’s cheeks, and she wasn’t sure if it was because of her sister’s dismissive reference to her as a “kid” or because she realized the ridiculousness of her own argument. She might have felt guilty if Nate had done something scandalous in retaliation for her refusal, but that hardly would have made his actions her fault.

“You went off alone with him because you wanted to,” Gerri concluded. “I was sixteen once myself, you know. I understand the lure of hormones, and I even understand Nathaniel’s appeal to a girl your age. But you’re not some little nobody Employee who can afford to indulge her every whim. You have to think about consequences, not just to yourself, but to all of us.”

Nadia wanted to sink into the softness of her bed and disappear. How could Gerri simultaneously be so right and so wrong? Obviously, Nadia’s hormones had nothing to do with why she’d let Nate draw her away from the party, but she was pretty sure there had been some part of her that had wanted to go with him, despite the risks. If she were being perfectly honest with herself, she’d have to admit that she sometimes enjoyed—or at least envied—Nate’s recklessness. The idea of taking part in it could be … supremely tempting.

Unable to think of a good reply, Nadia settled for silence, picking at the loose edge of the tape that held her IV in place. She was ready to have the thing out and get out of bed, if only to escape Gerri’s penetrating gaze.